NEW YORK – More than a decade before becoming President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer, observed that, among the branches of property law, the distribution of mining rights most elegantly reflects the vicissitudes of social and political relations. According to Hoover, mining rights were a “never-ending contention,” as old as economic and civil conflict, among four principal classes – overlord, state, landowner, and miner. “Somebody,” he concluded, “has to keep peace and settle disputes.”
NEW YORK – More than a decade before becoming President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer, observed that, among the branches of property law, the distribution of mining rights most elegantly reflects the vicissitudes of social and political relations. According to Hoover, mining rights were a “never-ending contention,” as old as economic and civil conflict, among four principal classes – overlord, state, landowner, and miner. “Somebody,” he concluded, “has to keep peace and settle disputes.”